


ace of wands

by Wagandea



Series: calendar year (accomplice end) [2]
Category: Persona 4
Genre: Accomplice Ending (Persona 4), Dubious Consent, M/M, Manipulative Souji, Uncle/Nephew Incest, souji pov
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-17
Updated: 2018-10-17
Packaged: 2019-08-02 23:23:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,815
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16314638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wagandea/pseuds/Wagandea
Summary: Adachi hasn't touched him since March.





	ace of wands

**Author's Note:**

> This is a sequel to [three of swords](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14839691), so please make sure you've read that one first for full impact!

In the end, Souji doesn’t have to pick up the phone at all.

He keeps it on him though--in his school bag, in his pocket, hand curled around it when he sleeps, and in the middle of the night when he gets meaningless texts from Yosuke or Rise or any of the others ( _r u awake partner??_ ) he can _sort of_ pretend that’s why. But his parents’ house is cold and empty and the phone hasn’t been _just a phone_ since December, even if he can’t stick his hand through the screen.

Souji unrolls his futon under the TV in his bedroom and waits for rain. The weather reports in Tokyo aren’t as reliable so it never comes, and that’s okay; Adachi never calls, and that’s okay too.

It doesn’t stop him from hovering over the call button on the nights Yosuke doesn’t text, but the air in Tokyo is cold and empty and as long as the TV is just a TV again, it’s just… easier _not_ to.

He does send Adachi a text, somewhere around May ( _Are you awake, partner?_ ), and it sits by its lonesome for months.

Souji still keeps the phone on him, just in case.

 

\--

 

He fits in at school too well or not at all. People talk to him, but no one walks him home, no one saves a seat for him in the library, and no one notices really when he comes in second on midterms. Souji doesn't mind. He'd almost forgotten what life before Inaba was like.

There is a girl who likes him, Class 2-2, and she’s a year younger but she’s pretty in a plain sort of way, friendly and smart enough. She brings him sweets at lunch and they never have enough to talk about. There’s no spark, no voice in his head. Souji picks at the rice in his bento and she tells him she likes him because he’s quiet. So mature, not like the other guys at their school.

Yosuke asks him on the phone, much later, if he likes her. They still tell each other everything, after all, and Yosuke laughs at him when he says he doesn’t know. He thinks he does. He thinks he should.

He walks her home and stands on the step. She asks him if he wants to come inside, _my parents aren’t going to be home until tomorrow_ , and laughs and pulls him over the threshold when he says he doesn’t know.

Souji doesn’t mind. He lets her get her hands under his shirt, and leaves without a word when his phone rings.

It’s just a spam call, but he listens to the prerecorded message outside in the dark three times through before he walks home. He left his umbrella and his coat. She asks him the next day if there’s someone else, from his old school, _someone_ , and he doesn’t say anything at all.

“Man, that blows,” Yosuke says, and Souji presses the phone closer to his ear, rolls over onto his back and watches the streetlight patterns on his ceiling. “Sorry your new friends suck. Guess that means you really do need to come back during the break, yeah?” Yosuke doesn’t sound sorry at all, and Souji smiles for the first time in months.

“Okay.”

“ _Awesome_. I’ll let everyone know. Call your uncle tomorrow, _no way_ he wouldn’t let you stay a while. And, uh, I wouldn’t mind checking out the other side, just, y’know. It’s still foggy here. Hey, what’s the weather like in Tokyo?”

“Rain today,” Souji says softly, but the TV doesn’t flicker to life, and even if he stays with the phone pressed to his ear after Yosuke goes to bed, no one else calls.

 

\--

 

It’s still raining in Tokyo, and Souji can hear the background of TV noise from Dojima’s end of the phone, distant voices of news reporters he hasn’t heard since March. It’s July now, a warm rain, and the humidity is somehow heavier than the fog back in Inaba. _Back home_ , he wants to think, then realizes he is home. It leaves him feeling empty.

Dojima sounds both softer and more reserved than the last time Souji spoke to him, and it isn’t his place but he doesn’t like it, the reminder that something’s changed since he left. Something’s changed, but maybe not enough. The conversation pauses and a commercial break comes on, Nanako singing along, _every day’s great at your--_

He just isn’t prepared to hear Adachi singing with her, offbeat and out of tune. Something about it seizes him. He hasn’t heard Adachi’s voice since the train station, _call if you get bored okay_ , and it makes Souji’s world feel suddenly smaller.

He thinks of Inaba and decides that’s okay.

“I’ll see you soon, Uncle.” He cradles the phone between his ear and shoulder awkwardly, unrolls the futon while saying his goodbyes. “Tell Adachi-san I said hello.”

Souji drops the call in the interest of _kindness_ , so Dojima doesn’t _have_ to say anything to that, but doesn’t let the phone go when he lays down to sleep with the rain pattering against the windows.

 

\--

 

He keeps the phone in hand when he does this, too, touching himself clumsily under the covers just to prove he still can. He hasn’t really wanted someone since he left anyway. Sometimes he thinks of Yosuke, and how laying down with him at home in that hazy little town, blankets of fog and actual blankets drawn around them, would make him feel safe. Yosuke was always the safe option, and sometimes Souji wishes he loved Yosuke enough to follow through.

But Souji doesn’t think about love much and most nights he doesn’t think of anyone at all.

(There’s this, too: Sometimes he thinks of Yosuke but can’t hold onto him, and when he turns over to press his sweaty face into the pillow, one hand on his cock and the other gripping his phone so tightly the plastic casing groans in protest, it’s the wrong set of willowy limbs he imagines under him.

Souji thought it would be easier. Let it go, move on and move away, pass him onto someone else like a worn out sweater or a toy he doesn’t want to play with anymore.

He always feels worse after he comes, which is about how he felt with the real Adachi too, and it’s just sharp enough to make Souji miss him.)

 

\--

 

Adachi isn’t at the train station and he isn’t at the Dojima house either. Souji doesn’t know what he expected, that the three of them would greet him together on the platform maybe, Adachi and Dojima each holding one of Nanako’s hands, like they can pretend to be some happy family. Maybe they could be, if Dojima doesn’t know. Souji hopes he doesn’t.

But everyone has something to hide in Inaba, and after Nanako’s gone up to bed, Dojima lights a cigarette up at the table.

“Alright with you if I have Adachi over for dinner tomorrow night? I know you were close.” He doesn’t like it, being fixed with a look of hard concern, Dojima talking at him like he’s a suspect under interrogation. Souji is familiar with the sentiment, it just only happened once about _Adachi_ , as if the thing was so horrible that Dojima couldn’t come out and just _ask_. Even after all the accusations of being involved in the serial murders.

It’s funny in hindsight. Adachi would find it funny. Souji sits up a little straighter.

“I don’t know. Does Adachi-san want to come over?”

The look Souji receives is long and evaluating. Dojima taps ash onto the table. When the conversation continues he’s uncharacteristically uncomfortable. “He’s been spending a lot of time here. If that’s a problem for you--”

“Adachi-san is my friend.”

They’re going in circles. Dojima makes a noise with his tongue and shakes his head. Souji wonders, vacantly, whose room Adachi will be pretending not to sleep in, or if they’re done with that pretense of deliberately mussed blankets on the couch after all.

(They pass the gas station on the way home but don’t stop, and through the fog Souji spots the back of a yellow raincoat.)

 

\--

 

He thinks he should feel something when he sees Adachi again. Feel bad, maybe, the guilt that should come after, but apart from an aversion to the _click_ of lighters that interrogation room from December doesn’t follow him around the way it _should_.

Mostly he feels like he’s waiting. Not the kind that grips with anticipation and fear, not even a creeping dread like waiting for the fog to roll in _before_. Like Adachi’s going to do something, or Souji is, but the ambiguity makes the thing easier to stomach.

( _For you, this was the truth_ , Adachi told him in December, wearing someone else’s voice, some other tone that doesn’t belong to the collection of masks Souji became so intimately familiar with. The truth feels empty, and Souji is okay with that.)

Adachi sits at the table across from him, picking at his rice. Dojima stays in the middle, shoulders tense, barely says a word over dinner but drinks four Asahi in a row. The TV is always on in the Dojima house, and Adachi’s eyes look yellow in the reflection when he slides them over to look at Souji.

He looks the same. Has the same weedwacker haircut, the rumpled suit. His eyes are too wide and the crooked smile looks ugly in most lights but maybe he just didn’t notice before. Souji liked Adachi, but not for the right reasons. He wonders if that’s what got Dojima, the look of something pitiful that should be minded, taken care of.

He wonders if he’s the only one who put his hands on Adachi not to help, but to harm.

“So what’s the weather like in Tokyo?”

It’s convincingly unthreatening, but the weather hasn’t been small talk since last April. Souji balls his hands into fists under the table.  
  
“I think it rained today,” Souji says softly, and closes his eyes.

Souji’s room is just how he left it in March, and it stays empty after everyone’s gone to bed. He leaves his door cracked just in case. In the morning there aren’t even blankets on the couch, and Adachi’s umbrella is still propped by the door.

 

\--

 

Adachi hasn’t touched him since March, and he keeps his distance now too. Souji’s been in Inaba two weeks and they haven’t been alone together longer than a few moments. He goes home early or sleeps in Dojima’s room, or doesn’t come over at all. Souji passes him once at Junes, walking Yosuke to work, but when he comes back to the lobby alone it’s empty.

It’s smart, and deliberate, and careful. Souji is smarter.

So if Adachi makes one misstep, drinks too much and stays up too late after Dojima, ends up with his back against the tatami and Souji’s knee between his thighs, well. Adachi should have known better. Never underestimate your enemy.

“You _stupid_ whore,” Adachi spits and writhes under him. Holding something down feels cathartic in a way it shouldn’t. This is as close as they ever get to a real fight, and maybe if they got things _right_ this wouldn’t be it, pushing and pulling at each other under the glare of the TV in the Dojima living room. “Couldn’t find some other guy to roll over and take it in the city? Are you that fucking _desperate?_ Shit, I’m sure one of your bratty friends would even roll over _nicely_ , because _they_ actually want you here--”

Souji should be used to this. He thinks he even _liked_ it before, Adachi fighting back and having to be held down or have his mouth covered. Being with Adachi satiated some primal urge to _hurt_ , whether or not he pretended to only leave bruises and welts because Adachi asked.

It’s never made him feel unwanted, but then, Adachi hasn’t touched him since March. Desperate is a good word, it feels just the right amount of hypocritical. Dump your lover on someone else because you can’t handle it, then come back months later for seconds because you can’t handle being alone _either_. Souji learns a lot about himself from Adachi, and none of it is particularly useful.

Adachi is hard against his thigh, and his hands have fisted themselves into Souji’s shirt, wound so tightly the fabric might rip. His skin looks sickly under the television glow.

He struggles against Souji, movements irate and jerky, but only succeeds in rutting against him further. Adachi’s head hits the tatami with a drawn out groan. Souji follows him down, teeth on Adachi’s neck, but--

“I don’t want to,” Adachi hisses, but Souji feels his hands tremble, feels his hips move. Adachi has always protested. He insists, louder: “I don’t _want_ to.”

“I love you,” Souji says, and wonders why he says it because he _doesn’t._ Underneath him, Adachi goes so still he might as well be a corpse pressed to the floor.

“Get off.” It starts weakly at first, then Adachi is pushing and pushing, beating his hands against Souji’s chest, voice increasing frantically in volume like he’s forgotten they’re not the only ones in the house. “Get off, get off, get _off--”_

Adachi is panicked, and for the first time since Souji met him, he thinks he hears _fear_ there too. There’s an instinctual response to that, wanting to hold tighter, wanting to bite. Souji is desperate, and he’s starving, but not for this.

Adachi is on the other side of the room as soon as Souji lets him go, panting and shaking, pupils blown wide in the dark, back pressed against the sliding glass door.

“I’m sorry.” He doesn’t know what else to say. It’s clear to him, eight months after the fact, that maybe in the end he took more from Adachi than Adachi took from him. A few empty threats in exchange for _this_.

Adachi must realize it too. Souji doesn’t wilt under the viciousness of his attention, but just this once, he wants to. “You know,” he says venomously, and his face is ugly like this, screwed up in helplessness and ire, “your uncle never had to force me.”

(At night, Souji overhears things he shouldn’t. His bedroom shares a wall with Dojima’s, and sometimes he can almost hear them talking. This is what he does hear: A dull thud like someone hitting the floor, followed by a whiny _ouch_ from Adachi. Dojima’s _sorry, sorry, sorry_ is only barely muffled, and then Adachi laughs like he can’t help it, stifled and genuine. It makes his stomach turn, it makes him sad for a reason he can’t discern.

Adachi’s laugh is cut off by a sharp intake of breath, and the sounds are just distinct enough that Souji has a picture of it in his mind’s eye. Adachi on his back, pupils blown wide, watching the streetlight patterns on the ceiling. Dojima between his legs, broad hands coaxing Adachi’s pale thighs apart, taking Adachi’s cock in his mouth. Dojima wouldn’t have to hold him down. Dojima would be soft with him.

Souji turns the TV on low and keeps it on for the rest of the night. If someone asks in the morning, a little white noise always helps him sleep.)

 

\--

 

Souji nicks three peach chuhai from the fridge when he thinks Dojima isn’t coming home. He’s only done this once before, November, with Dojima and Nanako in the hospital and Adachi over too many nights to count.

They’re not Dojima’s anyway, he’s never drank anything but Asahi at the house. He drinks them quickly, one after another, and barely tastes the shochu, though the alcohol burn lingers at the back of his tongue. He barely even looks up when the front door opens, knows he’s been caught but isn’t surprised.

Dojima isn’t surprised either. He gives Souji a searching look, and his eyes linger on the can in Souji’s hands, probably trying to discern if it’s empty. It is. Slowly, he drops his keys on the table and goes for the fridge. Souji watches him through the haze in his head and is somehow surprised when Dojima eases down next to him on the tatami, a beer can in his hands.

The tab pops too loudly when Dojima opens it. His throat bobs up and down when he takes a long swig. Souji wishes he wasn’t watching. His fingers dent the sides of the chuhai can with a metal sound.

Dojima sets his can on the table. “When is someone going to tell me what the hell is going on in this goddamn house?” He sounds more tired than angry, worn thin. Souji swallows.

“I don’t think Adachi-san likes me very much.” _Anymore_. That part goes unspoken. Souji’s voice is small and quiet.

“Adachi is your friend,” Dojima prompts, cautiously. It’s a question and it isn’t. Souji shakes his head.

“I don’t know.”

There’s a broad hand on his back. It rests there tentatively at first, then Souji leans into it. The empty chuhai can rolls across the floor, stops in one of the grooves where two tatami panels meet. Maybe it’s supposed to be comforting. Souji leans into it, and then he leans into Dojima.

The moment hangs in the air between them. It’s dark in the living room, and he can’t see Dojima’s face clearly.

It’s easier to kiss him than it would be not to. His stubble is harsh where it rubs against Souji’s jaw. Dojima doesn’t kiss back, but for a few seconds too many in that dark living room he lets Souji have him. Souji barely notices the taste of the beer, he’s numb to it.

Dojima’s hands find his shoulders, and Souji lets himself be gently pushed away. Dojima clears his throat, awkward or uncomfortable. “Adachi and I have been seeing each other.”

The statement echoes starkly around the room. Souji should feel something about it, to hear it said so plainly. It’s what he wanted, back in March, but five months is a long time when you’re seventeen.

“Okay.” He should point out the way that sounds, how _that_ ’s what Dojima’s objection is, not _you’re seventeen_ or _you’re my nephew_ , but it doesn’t seem to matter anymore.

“Alright,” Dojima says warily, and his hands slip off of Souji’s shoulders. One of them lingers, a touch at Souji’s elbow drawn down to his wrist. Something constricts in his chest. Dojima takes the mostly full beer can with him when he stands up to leave.

“If you change your mind,” Souji calls after him softly, and if Dojima didn’t stop at the stairs he wouldn’t be sure he hears him at all, “I don’t think Adachi-san would object to having a third person.”

 

\--

 

“--Dude, are you drunk?”

“A little,” Souji admits, but it feels like confessing to something greater, something more incriminating than three chuhai. He stands in the garden and presses the phone harder to his ear, eyes to the sky. Dark clouds are rolling in over the fog. Rain today. He lets out a shaky breath. “Can I come over?”

Yosuke doesn’t seem to know what to say to that, and if Souji thinks about it he doesn’t blame him. He’s not certain Yosuke, _any_ of his friends, have ever seen him upset and vulnerable. He doesn’t like it. It makes him feel itchy, like he’s wearing the wrong skin.

“Uh, I mean, yeah of course.” There’s an odd quality to his voice, tinny through the speaker, like Yosuke wants to be concerned but isn’t sure how _much_. “My parents are in bed though, so just text me when you get here. Did… something happen at your house?”

 _Yes_ , Souji tries to say, but the words catch in his mouth. He wants to tell Yosuke everything, the last eight months, but never comes through. “I’ll tell you later.”

Yosuke doesn’t press. It starts raining after the first three blocks and he’s soaking wet by the time Yosuke is pulling him inside, sneaking him through dark hallways to his bedroom. He doesn’t hear half of what Yosuke is saying, but complies when dry clothes are pressed into his hands. It seems strange to be cared for, again.

So he sits at the end of Yosuke’s futon in a borrowed Yasogami tracksuit and says tonelessly: “My uncle is fucking Adachi-san.”

Yosuke goes pale and slack-jawed. It isn’t the reason Souji is here, not really, but it’s enough. It catches Yosuke’s attention, at least, in a way that Souji doesn’t have to say any more.

“Holy shit, _seriously?_ Man, we thought _you_ were--”

He stops, shuts his mouth and grimaces. Yosuke has a habit of saying things without thinking about them. It’s that he _noticed_ that surprises Souji, but maybe it shouldn’t have. It _was_ that obvious. “Fucking Adachi?” Souji prompts, more curious than anything. Yosuke’s silence is enough of an answer. Souji exhales, slowly. “I was. Until March.”

Yosuke looks like he’s fighting some great internal battle, and Souji envies him for it--god, what he wouldn’t give to go back eight months, a year, when pondering friends’ sexualities was the great moral dilemma.

“I’m okay with it if you’re… like that,” Yosuke finishes lamely, and an ugly pink flush crawls over his face. It isn’t very appealing in the wrong light like this, makes his face look blotchy, but Souji sort of likes it anyway. Yosuke is sitting very, very close, and their knees brush when he fidgets.  
  
“I know.” Souji still has the taste of shochu on the back of his tongue, and he can still feel the phantom warmth of Dojima’s mouth.

“But _I’m_ not.”

“I know.”

Yosuke won’t look at him when he’s talking. He looks, just a little, like he wants to cry. Souji knows what comes next. “Can we--?” But Yosuke doesn’t have to ask, and Souji is on top of him before he can finish.

Souji is starving, he reminds himself of this, and kissing Yosuke makes him feel slightly less so. He doesn’t know if he’s relieved or disappointed that Yosuke doesn’t ask Souji to hurt him.

(Later, after Yosuke’s fallen asleep, Souji stays up and stares at his phone screen. He keeps it open for a long time, and when he finally presses the delete button over Adachi’s contact, it feels like he’s lost something important, some awful twisted up part of himself. The phone is just a phone.)

 

\--

 

Dojima’s busy with work, gets called in early, so Adachi drives him to the train station instead. Yosuke insists on tagging along, and on the platform flashes Souji a grin and says: “Call if you get bored, yeah?”

Souji locks eyes with Adachi, but there’s nothing passed between them this time, no understanding. He takes a deep breath. “I will.”

**Author's Note:**

> [tumblr](https://wagandea.tumblr.com/) | [twitter](https://twitter.com/wagandea)


End file.
